GS Chandy says:>i) Human thought is something that humans do. Some of us >seem to do it more; some less.>>ii) Human thought appear to be 'different' from animal >thought - or so we like to think.

If I throw a ball and my dog catches it, we can together observe remarkable coordination of eye and nervous system and muscle. If I further describe (based on what little we do know about how the dog manages this feat,) what's going on as (in part) a physical "information process", I don't think I would lose too many people on account of those words.

So, putting aside for the moment the distinction between human thought and animal "nervous system processes", we can still ask whether the computational framework that we have from math and now 80 years of computer science, can somehow be used, and adapted as need be, to a deeper understanding of those dog based processes. Likewise to animal behaviors of different kinds, such as ant colonies and whatnot.

Supposing such a program begins to achieve some modest success, I think it would be rather far fetched to hold out and claim that those further understandings had nothing whatsoever to do with human thought and capabilities. Perhaps at some point we will need to look for quantum processes or "Platonic realms" to augment our understanding of "information processing" in this more general biological setting; could be we will need that in trying to understand more fully some simple organisms, much less humans.

Comparing humans directly to machines generates a lot of emotional heat, some of which may be good, and some counterproductive.